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Emotion category-modulated interpretation bias in perceiving ambiguous facial expressions

In contrast to prototypical facial expressions, we show less perceptual tolerance in perceiving vague expressions by demonstrating an interpretation bias, such as more frequent perception of anger or happiness when categorizing ambiguous expressions of angry and happy faces that are morphed in diffe...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Todd, Emily, Subendran, Shaini, Wright, George, Guo, Kun
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10510303/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37427421
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/03010066231186936
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author Todd, Emily
Subendran, Shaini
Wright, George
Guo, Kun
author_facet Todd, Emily
Subendran, Shaini
Wright, George
Guo, Kun
author_sort Todd, Emily
collection PubMed
description In contrast to prototypical facial expressions, we show less perceptual tolerance in perceiving vague expressions by demonstrating an interpretation bias, such as more frequent perception of anger or happiness when categorizing ambiguous expressions of angry and happy faces that are morphed in different proportions and displayed under high- or low-quality conditions. However, it remains unclear whether this interpretation bias is specific to emotion categories or reflects a general negativity versus positivity bias and whether the degree of this bias is affected by the valence or category of two morphed expressions. These questions were examined in two eye-tracking experiments by systematically manipulating expression ambiguity and image quality in fear- and sad-happiness faces (Experiment 1) and by directly comparing anger-, fear-, sadness-, and disgust-happiness expressions (Experiment 2). We found that increasing expression ambiguity and degrading image quality induced a general negativity versus positivity bias in expression categorization. The degree of negativity bias, the associated reaction time and face-viewing gaze allocation were further manipulated by different expression combinations. It seems that although we show a viewing condition-dependent bias in interpreting vague facial expressions that display valence-contradicting expressive cues, it appears that the perception of these ambiguous expressions is guided by a categorical process similar to that involved in perceiving prototypical expressions.
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spelling pubmed-105103032023-09-21 Emotion category-modulated interpretation bias in perceiving ambiguous facial expressions Todd, Emily Subendran, Shaini Wright, George Guo, Kun Perception Articles In contrast to prototypical facial expressions, we show less perceptual tolerance in perceiving vague expressions by demonstrating an interpretation bias, such as more frequent perception of anger or happiness when categorizing ambiguous expressions of angry and happy faces that are morphed in different proportions and displayed under high- or low-quality conditions. However, it remains unclear whether this interpretation bias is specific to emotion categories or reflects a general negativity versus positivity bias and whether the degree of this bias is affected by the valence or category of two morphed expressions. These questions were examined in two eye-tracking experiments by systematically manipulating expression ambiguity and image quality in fear- and sad-happiness faces (Experiment 1) and by directly comparing anger-, fear-, sadness-, and disgust-happiness expressions (Experiment 2). We found that increasing expression ambiguity and degrading image quality induced a general negativity versus positivity bias in expression categorization. The degree of negativity bias, the associated reaction time and face-viewing gaze allocation were further manipulated by different expression combinations. It seems that although we show a viewing condition-dependent bias in interpreting vague facial expressions that display valence-contradicting expressive cues, it appears that the perception of these ambiguous expressions is guided by a categorical process similar to that involved in perceiving prototypical expressions. SAGE Publications 2023-07-10 2023-10 /pmc/articles/PMC10510303/ /pubmed/37427421 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/03010066231186936 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Articles
Todd, Emily
Subendran, Shaini
Wright, George
Guo, Kun
Emotion category-modulated interpretation bias in perceiving ambiguous facial expressions
title Emotion category-modulated interpretation bias in perceiving ambiguous facial expressions
title_full Emotion category-modulated interpretation bias in perceiving ambiguous facial expressions
title_fullStr Emotion category-modulated interpretation bias in perceiving ambiguous facial expressions
title_full_unstemmed Emotion category-modulated interpretation bias in perceiving ambiguous facial expressions
title_short Emotion category-modulated interpretation bias in perceiving ambiguous facial expressions
title_sort emotion category-modulated interpretation bias in perceiving ambiguous facial expressions
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10510303/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37427421
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/03010066231186936
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